Flexibility and Adaptability: Week of May 4th, 2020

Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and Friends,

Today we begin our 9^th week of online training as the semester winds down and sheltering at home. Again, I want to sincerely thank our faculty, students and staff for their flexibility and adaptability as they all work long and hard to make this a meaningful educational experience.

I got out to play 9 holes of golf yesterday morning – all by myself. While the golf was ugly, the time allowed me to think about what might be next for all of us. While I didn’t come up with any new, groundbreaking thoughts on the matter, I kept coming back to the thought about how lucky I was to be part of team that’s capable of adapting quickly to just about anything, if we continue to do it together.

What is abundantly clear is that none of the great work that’s already been accomplished, and will need to continue well into the future, happens without great teamwork and malleability. In my Weekly Update on Friday I referred to this when I noted that even in our name SALUS, there is an “US”, which I think it’s important to highlight. In this difficult, unpredictable, unprecedented time, we will always be stronger working as a team – a SALUS. There are many examples throughout history of how teams perform much more effectively and efficiently than individuals.  

I just read an interesting article about how a Navy Reserve cardiac electrophysiologist from Phoenix, with the help of a team of active duty Navy cardiac surgeons, Hospital Corpsmen and remote contractors, who had never worked together previously, performed the first ever pacemaker surgery on the USNS Mercy while she was assisting the city of Los Angles. This type of surgery, while commonplace in civilian healthcare facilities, is not the type of procedure routinely performed on a hospital ship designed for combat casualty care. The only way they were able to pull this off successfully was as a team. If the cardiac electrophysiologist decided to try to do it alone or for that matter, if one of the other surgeons would have tried to do this without seeking help, it would not have been successful. Here’s a link to the article.  

Teamwork provides us a roadmap to success as we navigate through the uncharted waters of this pandemic. Unfortunately, there are more unknowns than knowns, but that shouldn’t discourage us – it should only motivate us to be more innovative, creative and resourceful. It also should inspire us to be thinking as a team rather than just an individual – because we are stronger together in thoughts and deeds. 

Throughout all this our clinic and academic leadership teams have been working with administration, the facilities staff and others to develop our reopening plans. Not knowing exactly when the Governor will allow us to proceed, we have developed several different scenarios that can be adjusted as needed. It is our sincere hope, that working together, we’ll be able to gain safe access to both our Elkins Park campus as well as our clinics as soon as possible. I’ve been lobbying State authorities to treat us differently from K-12 educational institutions. While I know our messages have been received, there’s been no decision as of yet. As soon as I know, you all will know and then, responsibly and safely, we’ll be off and running.

Finally, I wanted to share a bit public health trivia with you that was sent to me by Board Vice-Chair, Dr. Dan Abramowicz. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, was a Hungarian physician and scientist who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures, specifically in maternity care. His work centered around hand-washing, resulted in dramatically cutting the incidence of puerperal fever (childbed fever) in new mothers. You can hear more about this interesting story here. One of the sad aspects of the story, as you’ll hear, is that while he was right, because people didn’t agree with him, it took years for his ideas to catch on – and to this day, people still don’t follow his sage advice. 

As you begin your week, think about the importance of teamwork and how even Dr. Semmelweis’s work would have been much more effective, if he had worked collegially with a team. If you’re feeling stressed, and who isn’t these days, or wondering when will this all end, you are not alone. We are in this for the long-haul so we need to be mentally and physically prepared for that. If you want to talk with one of our counselors, don’t hesitate to make an appointment here.  

We will get through this as a team – we are ONE SALUS – which makes us SALUS STRONG!

Have a great week – and don’t forget, next Sunday is Mother’s Day!

Mike